DESCRIPTION

sa summarizes information about previously executed commands as
recorded in the acct file. In addition, it condenses this data into a
summary file named savacct which contains the number of times the
command was called and the system resources used. The information can
also be summarized on a per-user basis; sa will save this information
into a file named usracct.
If no arguments are specified, sa will print information about all of
the commands in the acct file.
If called with a file name as the last argument, sa will use that file
instead of the system’s default acct file.
By default, sa will sort the output by sum of user and system time. If
command names have unprintable characters, or are only called once, sa
will sort them into a group called ‘***other’. If more than one
sorting option is specified, the list will be sorted by the one
specified last on the command line.
The output fields are labeled as follows:
cpu sum of system and user time in cpu seconds
re "real time" in cpu seconds
k cpu-time averaged core usage, in 1k units
k*sec cpu storage integral (kilo-core seconds)
u user cpu time in cpu seconds
s system time in cpu seconds
An asterisk will appear after the name of commands that forked but
didn’t call exec.
GNU sa takes care to implement a number of features not found in other
versions. For example, most versions of sa don’t pay attention to
flags like ‘--print-seconds’ and ‘--sort-num-calls’ when printing out
commands when combined with the ‘--user-summary’ or ‘--print-users’
flags. GNU sa pays attention to these flags if they are applicable.
Also, MIPS’ sa stores the average memory use as a short rather than a
double, resulting in some round-off errors. GNU sa uses double the
whole way through.

OPTIONS

-a,--list-all-names
Force sa not to sort those command names with unprintable
characters and those used only once into the ***other group.
-b,--sort-sys-user-div-calls
Sort the output by the sum of user and system time divided by
the number of calls.
-c,--percentages
Print percentages of total time for the command’s user, system,
and real time values.
-f,--not-interactive
When using the ‘--threshold’ option, assume that all answers to
interactive queries will be affirmative.
-i,--dont-read-summary-file
Don’t read the information in the system’s default savacct file.
-j,--print-seconds
Instead of printing total minutes for each category, print
seconds per call.
-k,--sort-cpu-avmem
Sort the output by cpu time average memory usage.
-K,--sort-ksec
Print and sort the output by the cpu-storage integral.
-l,--separate-times
Print separate columns for system and user time; usually the two
are added together and listed as ‘cpu’.
-m,--user-summary
Print the number of processes and number of CPU minutes on a
per-user basis.
-n,--sort-num-calls
Sort the output by the number of calls. This is the default
sorting method.
-r,--reverse-sort
Sort output items in reverse order.
-s,--merge
Merge the summarized accounting data into the summary files
savacct and usracct.-t,--print-ratio
For each entry, print the ratio of real time to the sum of
system and user times. If the sum of system and user times is
too small to report--the sum is zero--‘*ignore*’ will appear in
this field.
-u,--print-users
For each command in the accounting file, print the userid and
command name. After printing all entries, quit. *Note*: this
flag supersedes all others.
-vnum--thresholdnum
Print commands which were executed num times or fewer and await
a reply from the terminal. If the response begins with ‘y’, add
the command to the ‘**junk**’ group.
--separate-forks
It really doesn’t make any sense to me that the stock version of
sa separates statistics for a particular executable depending on
whether or not that command forked. Therefore, GNU sa lumps
this information together unless this option is specified.
--debug
Print verbose internal information.
-V,--version
Print the version number of sa.-h,--help
Prints the usage string and default locations of system files to
standard output and exits.
--sort-real-time
Sort the output by the "real time" field.
--other-usracct-filefilename
Write summaries by user ID to filename rather than the system’s
default usracct file.
--other-savacct-filefilename
Write summaries by command name to filename rather than the
system’s default SAVACCT file.
--other-filefilename
Read from the file filename instead of the system’s default ACCT
file.

FILES

acct The raw system wide process accounting file. See acct(5) (or
pacct(5)) for further details.
savacct
A summary of system process accounting sorted by command.
usracct
A summary of system process accounting sorted by user ID.

BUGS

There is not yet a wide experience base for comparing the output of GNU
sa with versions of sa in many other systems. The problem is that the
data files grow big in a short time and therefore require a lot of disk
space.

AUTHOR

The GNU accounting utilities were written by Noel Cragg
<noel@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. The man page was adapted from the accounting
texinfo page by Susan Kleinmann <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>.